Just under a third of employees are not passing their six-month probation period costing companies on average £24,000 , forcing businesses to question the recruiters it uses.
This research was carried out by Worksome, a recruitment-tech firm, which found that 31 per cent of employees failed to pass their probation period. Breaking down the costs of a bad hire for a company, on average businesses spend £6,559 a year on recruitment and hiring. What adds to the figure is the salary the employee is paid. With the average UK salary being £35,000, six months comes to £17,000.
Businesses seem to have an issue with recruiters as 32 per cent of business owners believe they are too pushy and rush to make a decision. Quite alarmingly, as small as 8 per cent of businesses feel new hires have all the skills needed for the job.
Only 6 per cent of businesses believe that recruiters have access to the best talent and 14 per cent of businesses saying recruiters are too expensive. As well as 13 per cent say that recruiters do not understand their business.
The result of these facts equates to bad news for the employee who just lost their job, recruiters and the company who made the hire.
Mathias Linnemann, co-founder of Worksome said:
With a third of candidates not making it past their six-month probationary period, we can see that something is broken in the recruitment and hiring process. While our research suggests pain-points relating to the use of recruitment consultants, there is no one single factor to blame. For many businesses, recruitment consultants offer a vital service and so shouldn’t be dismissed, or all tarred with the same brush. If hiring managers can feel more confident about candidates and recruits before they walk through the door, they can take back a level of control and feel more empowered to make the right decisions.
Using technology alongside the traditional recruitment methods is the best way for hiring managers to access the talent they need in a smarter and more sustainable way. The right recruitment-tech can help businesses validate and hire talent more quickly and more affordably than traditional recruiters. These systems, which use AI to automate CVs and applications for the best fit, can also remove any subconscious bias that plays into decision making. As well as empowering hiring managers, such solutions can also improve the way recruitment consultants operate by making it impossible to fill a role for the sake of filling it — with the wrong candidate for the job.
In order to collate this research, Worksome spoke to over 515 senior decision makers in a business with at least 10 employees up and down the country.
Interested in recruiting and retaining new talent? We recommend the Recruitment and Retention Conference 2019.
Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.